


Read It and Weep

by phansomedevil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Time, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Meta, Meta as hell, One Shot, Pining, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:58:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4913272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phansomedevil/pseuds/phansomedevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan's feelings toward Phil are nothing but platonic, or so he thinks before stumbling upon some actually decent phanfiction and falling face-first into the abyss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Read It and Weep

It was Dan’s secret shame. No one could fairly blame him for it. He was only human, right? Granted, he counted himself among the odd minority of humans who were regularly featured in Internet-based speculative fiction. But hey, whatever. Point was that sometimes he got curious how people imagined him. Sometimes that curiosity overcame him. Sometimes—the vast majority of the time, really—he was just as flawed and self-occupied as anybody else.

So yes, he read the bloody fanfiction. Not regularly, mind you. Only when he was bored and restless, alone on his laptop in the early hours of the morning, and some blog with a derivative of his username happened to post something interesting-sounding in the main tags.

He did his best to circumvent the porn. It hardly shocked him; he liked to think of himself as a seasoned veteran of weird fan culture, and he even took strides to foster the freakiness where he could. Hentai flash games he ate up at age twelve, but everyone had their limit. His appeared to be poorly written erotica about him and his best friend.

Often people posted ratings or warnings or whatever and that was quite considerate of them, but more often it seemed the porn would sneak up on him. One time he’d been skimming this perfectly innocuous astronaut–slash–alien story when _woah intergalactic buttsex._ Dan closed out of there real fast. Another time there’d been a hamster involved and he got sucked in like a train wreck. When he’d had actual nightmares after that—about, god… _burrowing_ —Dan found himself wondering whether his subscribers were on their way to literally inflicting him with PTSD.

He was pretty sure Phil didn’t share his problem. Phil, self-possessed saint that he evidently was, had taken one look at a particularly disturbing bit of fiction someone had sent to his personal email and decided that was quite enough. _Never again, thanks._ He’d said it with such assurance, intermingled with the unsurprising dash of horror. Dan both admired and cowered at his willpower.

Phil had gone to bed early after a long flight home from the states, sleeping off jetlag, and Dan was at it again—his worst habit. As he was typing the word “phanfiction” into his Tumblr search bar, the floor let out a creak and Dan jumped. God, he was like a relapsed chain-smoker trying to hide the butts.

For the first time, the upper bar for recommended blogs—recommended for what reason, Dan’s guess was as good as anyone’s—caught his attention. He clicked on one of the options and was brought to an actually pretty legit-looking website. It was impressive, with all the organized tabs and the clean layout. Predictably, chibi versions of himself and Phil smiled all cute at him from the top of the page, but nevertheless.

Back to the business at hand, Dan clicked on a tab that brought him to long list of tags. It appeared they’d sorted everything by literally every possible variable. The whole of it was overwhelming, to say the least, so Dan defaulted to the most obvious link: “The Best of the Best.”

The new page opened up before him and his curiosity was piqued. What did his subscribers think was good writing? How far off from _actually_ good writing was it? He figured he knew his demographic, and his own literary tastes at thirteen had been, admittedly, a little underdeveloped. Dan clicked on the first link on the page’s master list with a truckload’s worth of salty skepticism. He was likely in for a nice laugh.

Dan skimmed the first paragraph, and it appeared to confirm his convictions. There was the “blue-eyed boy” and the “younger” and the recipe-for-a-hookup scenario. As he read a little further, he granted some concessions. He could see how people would like this, maybe. The dialogue wasn’t bad. A few lines he could see him or Phil really saying. He chuckled under his breath at a snide remark fake-him made; perhaps he would file that away for later.

Now the narrative was clearly headed toward a kiss, as per usual. Dan could deal with some PG action, and this was one of the better phanfics he’d read, so he decided not to duck out just yet. Alright, fake-Dan was confessing attraction to fake-Phil and yeah—he would be pretty much exactly this awkward in the equivalent real-life situation. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being able to so accurately translate the innate awkwardness of Dan into his “danisnotonfire” persona. 

And there was the kissing. It figured that fake-Phil would opt for no-holds-barred physical reciprocation rather than the messiness of words. Dan thought he should probably jump ship now. Tongues were becoming familiar with mouths they didn’t natively inhabit, and that was a good sign that things would be entering porn-ville quite shortly. A guy couldn’t catch a break; that the guy put himself in this position was irrelevant. 

Dan didn’t stop reading. Fake-Dan had broken from the make-out and was suggesting they take their activities to a horizontal surface. Well, there it was. Most definitely porn, fast incoming, avert your eyes children. He kept reading. _Why was he still reading?_

Fake-Phil was quite keen on the getting-horizontal idea. Fake-Phil was pulling fake-Dan by the hand into the bedroom, shoving him back onto the duvet and pressing close on top of him, mouth moving toward his neck to lick and bite and… _was he finding this hot?_

The second the thought occurred Dan slammed down his laptop screen, shoving it off his lap like some pet gone rapid. _Was he actually?_ Shit. Fucking shit. Okay. Fuck. He just had to calm his tits and think about this rationally for a minute. So the writing was good. At last he’d found some well-written phanfiction; it was bound to happen eventually. It must’ve been he’d gotten caught up enough in the writing that he’d dissociated. Yeah, that was totally it. He’d let himself forget that fake-Dan was him and fake-Phil was, well, Phil. He’d let them become characters. A real hats-off to the writer for that one.

Dan breathed a little easier. It was all fine; he was fine. Maybe he’d even tell Phil about this later and they could laugh over it. On second thought, maybe he’d better… yeah he’d better not.

Crisis averted, Dan stared at his discarded laptop. It was sitting innocently on a cushion half a meter away, but he knew better. It had to be biding its time for a second attack. No, he was being ridiculous. He needed to get himself the fuck together and face the source of the madness. He would prove it to himself. It would be an easy three-step process: read the rest of the fic, remember to associate the fuck out of it, and embrace the thorough creeping-out that would most definitely ensue.

Gingerly, he returned the laptop to his lap. Typing in his password felt like diffusing a bomb; the words went blurry for a second as if his eyes were trying to defend themselves. All he had to do was internalize that this was him and Phil. That would do the trick. Dan picked up reading where he’d left off.

Fake-Phil—no, _Phil_ , real Phil, his best friend Phil—was on top of him, in the process of giving him a hickey. God, how the hell had Dan’s subscribers caught on to his neck being a crazy erogenous zone? Not even Phil knew about that, unless he’d somehow deciphered Dan’s kinks along with the rest of them. Fake-Phil certainly seemed to have figured out a few things.

Dan made himself focus. The story was bound to go below the belt soon, and that would repel him from its clutches. Fake-Dan was being loud—god, he didn’t think he was ever that loud—and grabbing at Phil’s bum. Phil did have a pretty enviable bum, come to think. Dan would, on occasion, let his eyes roam when Phil bent over, but his appreciation was purely aesthetic.

Here it was. Fake-Phil had popped open the top button of his jeans and was pushing under his pants and _god_ _that was the best feeling_. When someone got their hand on him for the first time, fingers other than his own, in clumsy strokes at first but then building up confidence. Phil had more experience than him, especially with guys. Dan bet he’d be good at it.

Fake-Phil was good at it. Phil was edging down his body with those hands and that mouth. Phil was shoving aside his jeans and pants at once and Phil was gasping out _fuck_ and then Phil’s mouth was… still in the glow of his computer screen, unable to help anything, Dan palmed himself over the thin fabric of his pajama bottoms.

He was so fucked.

* * *

In Dan’s experience, there were certain lines that—once crossed—became extremely difficult to uncross. Wanking to your best friend turned out to be one of them.

Dan saw it all too clearly for the hideous downward spiral it was. Sure, it started out innocently enough. After the first night’s brief loss of hand control, he’d shut off the laptop in a hurry. He’d stared up at his bedroom ceiling for hours, thinking and panicking and resolutely ignoring his hard-on like some kind of penance.

The next morning Dan had to steel himself to meet Phil’s eyes. He was terrified his best friend would somehow be able to tell that he’d violated the sanctity of their best friendship or whatever. But if at any point Phil noticed him acting strangely, he neglected to bring it up. Dan felt like he’d gotten away with something. He’d escaped almost certain disaster, and that obviously meant that he had to swear to every god not to fucking do it again.

But like clockwork, three a.m. found Dan slumped into his sofa crease, stealthily browsing that infernal webpage. It only takes a taste of the underworld’s food to be stuck with Hades forever. Or so Dan figured as he clicked on the link to the second fanfiction down the list, hating himself even as his nerves buzzed with excitement.

The majority of him was hoping last night was a fluke. But then fake-Phil was pinning his wrists to the wall and calling him _baby_ and fuck he could almost hear how Phil’s voice would color that word, how his mouth would shape it, how Phil’s breath would ghost warm into his ear. Fake-Phil was pressing two fingers knuckle-deep inside him. He was begging for more, saying he could take it, and Dan thought about Phil’s hands—so pretty and sure. It was all too much. Dan fumbled to grasp at himself, nearly dragging down his pants in the hurry. His eyes were paused on Phil’s name as he finally took his aching cock into his hand. At the first stroke he was shivering.

Phil was asleep in the other room and this wasn’t right; it couldn’t be. But fake-Phil was taking him, pushing hard inside his body and Dan’s mind stored everything else away. He wanted it. With each stroke of his fist, he wanted it. Phil would be dark-eyed and strong, flush-faced and good. Dan’s breathing was heavier and his head yearned to be thrown back against the sofa but he had keep reading.

His hand moved tight and fast, picking up wetness at the tip, and fake-Phil was slamming into him and they were coming but Dan wasn’t there yet. Phil was asleep in the other room but Dan let his imagination take over. He thought about Phil wandering out, bedhead and bleary eyes. He pictured Phil taking one roving look at what he was doing, gasping out Dan’s name like a question and a plea, unable to keep from touching himself. Dan came hard then, harder than he had in ages, so that it knocked all the energy from him in one strike. He cashed in quickly on his post-orgasmic exhaustion, hoping to avoid thinking too hard about his mind’s descent into the depths.

From there on out, Dan was pretty much a lost cause. His days went by normal as ever, Phil by his side and blissfully unaware of how Dan was spending his nights. The original master list he’d found became his go-to resource, and he steadily worked his way down it. Plenty of the stories weren’t great, and a fair few were exactly the brand of laughably horrifying that Dan had not long ago applied to all fanfiction. These he skipped over, going on find those that captured him and Phil close enough that—if he squinted his eyes and suspended his disbelief—he could trick his mind into making fake-Phil real. At least long enough to get off on it. 

Whether a story gratified instantly or built him up first with several thousand words of plot, Dan ended up with his hand down his pants, working off the frustrations of a dozen ready-made fantasies. He didn’t have to rely on fanfiction for long before his own imagination began working in overdrive. It was a vicious cycle, Dan was realizing. The more fanfiction he consumed, and the more his imagination played with the possibilities, the more infuriatingly hot and fucking unattainable his real-life best friend seemed to become.

Phil almost caught him a few times. The first was a Wednesday around four in the morning. Dan had been midway through a thoroughly engrossing 50k post-apocalyptic AU. They’d just escaped a zombie hoard and Dan was bracing himself for the “wow we’re alive,”adrenaline-fueled hookup. Mercifully, he heard Phil’s door squeak and he was able to rearrange his face into a less rapt expression before his best friend caught sight of him. Phil was up for a wee, too sleepy to do more than grunt in his direction. For that, Dan was grateful.

The next time was a closer call. Convinced Phil had gone to bed, Dan dove into a shorter story. Normally he failed to understand why fanfiction writers were so fixated on American high-school scenarios, but in this one they both had superpowers, so Dan decided to let the issue slide. Super-teenagers used their powers quite creatively, it seemed. It shouldn’t be hot that telekinetic fake-Phil was tying down necromancer fake-Dan with his mind, and yet—

“How goes the nocturnal browsing?”

Dan jumped, to his dismay. Not only was Phil awake but also heading straight for the sofa that was definitely no longer a safe space. It took him three tries to close the incriminating tabs, and the whole ten seconds before Phil sat down beside him.

“Nothing of note,” said Dan, casually shifting his laptop over the semi threatening to show through his pajama bottoms. “Thought you were sleeping.” 

“Tried to,” said Phil. “Couldn’t. Must be watching too much American Horror Story. Spot anything interesting on… Google?” 

Phil had glanced over at his cleansed browser, where the search engine’s homepage blinked. It was his best cover at a moment’s notice. 

“I was just, uh, googling myself.”

Phil’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Really? Why?”

“Morbid curiosity? I dunno, Phil, why does anybody do anything in a universe slowly hurtling toward certain fiery death? ” Dan took Phil’s struggling-to-respond pause to subtly adjust himself beneath the laptop. “So—wanna watch a film? Let’s watch a film.”

Dan learned from his carelessness. The next night found him—to be fair—with his dick in hand and his best friend in mind, but this time behind a locked bedroom door. As long as the whole business stayed safely there, he would be alright. Phil would be none the wiser for all the ways Dan’s mind had used him. The fantasies weren’t hurting anybody, Dan thought, apart from maybe himself. Then again, he had brought on this fixation. He kept feeding it of his own free will. Wanting Phil so hopelessly in the dark was pretty much the misery he deserved.

The following evening Dan was kicking off his shoes after a milk run. He called out to Phil from the foyer.

“So I was at the Tesco and the lady behind the counter is staring at me, right, and the first thing she says is— _what the hell are you doing_?”

“She asked what you were doing?” said Phil, from the sofa, with Dan’s MacBook propped open on his lap.

“No,” said Dan, deathly calm despite the fact that he was more petrified than he could ever remember being. “Is there a reason you’re on my laptop?”

“Mine died, and yours was just sitting here, and my charger was all the way in the bedroom.” Phil’s face was, as usual, frustratingly unreadable.

“You know my password?” Of course he did. Considering Phil usually knew more about him than Dan did himself, Dan really should have planned for this eventuality.

“I was only gonna be on it for a minute. Just to finish a work email.”

Dan was starting to breathe a little easier. But as he took a tentative step closer to his laptop, Phil quickly shut the lid.

“So what have you been up to? Researching for a new video?” Phil asked, like the harsh behavior toward Dan’s laptop was not at all strange.

“No,” said Dan slowly. As he stood there, confusion—on the edge of shock—passed over Phil’s face like the beam of a lighthouse. Dan’s eyes narrowed. His heart picked up an extra beat. “Phil—have you been reading my search history?”  

“I—” Phil stammered. “I needed to find a tab I closed accidentally and then… I got distracted.”

“I can explain.”

“Can you?”

Dan took a step closer, hesitated, and sat primly on the far end of the sofa. His brain whirred into overdrive. “I found some random link on Tumblr and it was disgustingly late and the writing was halfway decent so I figured, hey, sleep is for actually functional adults so why not go ahead and see what some fourteen-year-old American girl thinks of my life.”

“You’ve clicked on two dozen just in the last week.”

“Honestly, one kept leading to another and I was ninety percent unconscious through most of—”

“Half the links are rated ‘explicit.’”

“Um.” Dan’s brain was overheating. “Right, well I—” In another second, cooling fans were going to start blasting air from his ears. “I’ve got nothing.”

Phil exhaled heavily.

“Fuck,” said Dan. He was going to have to move out, probably tomorrow. There was no getting past this. Dan had brought divine retribution on them both.

Phil reopened Dan’s laptop—that accursed object. He was scrolling down some page, smirking.

“They hardly ever get me right.”

Dan blinked. “What?”

“I mean,” Phil cleared his throat with a cough, and read, “ _Oh yeah, take my huge cock, baby_.” He laughed. “Seriously?”

“I—I only read that one partway.”

“It wouldn’t be like that, you know,” said Phil. Whatever that expression in his eyes meant, it was on a one-way trip to Dan’s pants.

“Oh yeah?”

“They write me like I’m the guy who dives right into it and swears a lot and just shoves you down on the bed and… you know.” Phil’s cheeks colored just a little bit, barely enough to break through the hieroglyphs.

If their viewers were that far off, Dan was honestly a little disappointed. He couldn’t help scooting a few centimeters closer to Phil, and he couldn’t resist asking.

“So, what would it be like?”

Phil’s eyes were wide and blue and Dan was an idiot because Phil had probably just been making an clinical observation and he probably meant to drop the issue right away or else toss Dan bodily from his life for being a pervert and now Dan had gone and just dug himself further down into this awful hole and _wow_ he was an idiot. Then, Phil’s gaze shifted. He was looking at Dan like he’d been challenged.

“It wouldn’t be sudden, for starters,” he said, carefully. “I wouldn’t, like, launch myself at you or catch you by surprise or anything. I’d make you wait until you knew for sure what was coming.”

Dan swallowed tightly. “You’re actually a tease, then.” He was only one-third joking, but Phil laughed low in his throat anyways.

“I just like… the person I’m with… to really want what’s happening to happen, you know? And I want it to be really clear that I want them back.”  

Phil was looking straight at him and Dan couldn’t breathe. They were speaking hypothetically, of course.

“What would happen then?” he asked, because he was a little shit who didn’t know what was good for him.

“Well, I’d kiss you,” said Phil, and then he licked his goddamn lips. “It’d be slow, though. Really soft at first, so you could close your eyes and barely realize it was happening. And then, just when you were getting relaxed, I’d really kiss you. I’d have one hand on your waist and the other holding your face and I’d kiss you until you felt shivers all the way down your back.”

For all the time Dan had spent fantasizing about his best friend, he hadn’t staked out nearly enough headspace to the thought of Phil kissing him. His brain was now bustling to remedy the imbalance. Something of this work must have translated to his face, because Phil continued.

“One thing would probably lead to another from there, but I’d make it good for you. I’d want you to know just how gorgeous you are. Especially with your eyes all dark and your hair messed up the way you can’t stand it and your legs spread out, waiting for me. Before long you’d stop caring about your hair or the noises you made and all you’d be able to think about is wanting more. And I promise I’d give it to you. Everything I had.”

Phil shuffled his hand through his fringe, almost breaking the moment. “Anyway, seems that side of me doesn’t come out too much in videos,” he smirked. “Not that I want it to exactly.”

The words were out of Dan’s mouth before he could fully consider the question.

“Maybe you could show me,” he said. He bit his lip, but the onslaught kept coming. “The difference wasn’t clear enough with your, um, descriptions.”

Once again, Dan wished he could deconstruct the brick wall of Phil’s expression.

“Well, if this were a phanfic... I’d probably swoop in,” said Phil, and to demonstrate he shot forward dramatically, almost close enough to sit on Dan’s lap. Dan wanted to laugh, but he was distracted by the thought that he had so rarely been close enough to make out each of the colors in Phil’s eyes. “And then I’d pull at your hair—like this.” When Phil tugged, none too lightly, Dan couldn’t hold back a gasp. “And then I’d do something like this.” Phil blinked once, and the next thing Dan registered was dry lips brushing his neck, the fleeting wetness of an open mouth. Phil was looking at him again before he could fully swallow a moan.

Dan tried to turn it into a cough. “Alright then, Don Juan.” The joke was half-hearted even to his ears. “What happens in real life?”

“Real life?”

“Just so I can see the difference,” Dan said softly.

“In real life,” said Phil, dragging his teeth across his bottom lip, “I’d get really close.” They already were. “And I’d look into your eyes.” They were impossibly blue. “I’d bring my hand up here.” Dan wasn’t sure if he imagined Phil’s hand shaking as it moved to cradle his face. “And I’d put my other hand here.” Dan felt a steady pressure on his hip. “And then I’d…” Dan’s breath hitched when Phil leaned that fraction of a centimeter closer.

“Is this what you want, Dan?” Finally, Phil’s face became a bit less impermeable. Phil was hesitant, and Dan could hardly believe that because he was pretty sure he’d been a drooling mess for the past five minutes. Now that he’d stumbled his way through the race, damn it if he didn’t reach that finish line.

Dan kissed him.

“Shit,” said Phil, dazed as they surfaced for air seconds or minutes later.

“Thought you didn’t swear.” Dan’s head was buzzing and his lips were tingling. It felt like he was pulling words from some sort of ethereal otherworld.

“Thought you liked that.”

Phil’s knowing look didn’t make Dan angry exactly. But it filled him, fueled him with a feeling next to anger. With a growl, he fisted both hands in his best friend’s hair and pulled their mouths together again.

Everyone’s favorite thing to do when it came to fanfic was describe how so and so “tasted.” Of course anybody who’d actually encountered a human mouth knew they didn’t taste like birthday cake or strawberries with the barest sprinkle of cinnamon. People tasted like pizza or vodka or maybe mint if they’d thought ahead, but there was no magical flavor of you that one could only learn by sticking their tongue down your throat.

Or so Dan thought until this moment, when he was tangled up in Phil’s distinctive fresh scent and the hot press of mouths and he just needed to know for sure, needed to push past the boundary of Phil’s lips and learn. Phil inhaled sharply when their kiss deepened. It was like he was claiming Dan’s breath for his own, and Dan didn’t even mind because he was pretty sure he could live off this taste. Phil’s taste. Not strawberries, but real and rich and immediate.

Dan got lost in it. He hardly noticed he was leaning his entire body weight into Phil until the other boy’s stomach muscles caved under the pressure. All at once Dan was sent sprawling on top of him. Dan was more than intrigued by the new positioning, and totally content to keep making out. But Phil was difficult to kiss when he was giggling.

“What,” said Dan, impatience building with every moment he couldn’t dedicate to Phil’s lips. He ducked his head to nip at Phil’s neck instead. “Shit, what?”

Phil shivered, not laughing anymore, and Dan was pleased.

“S’ nothing.” Phil’s lips were parted, his eyes fluttering closed. He had balled his hands in Dan’s t-shirt. Dan was approximately five seconds away from flinging it from his body like the useless bunch of fabric it was. The same should go for Phil’s button-up as well, Dan thought, as he shoved both hands beneath it. He was rewarded by Phil gasping out his name.

“Phanfic’s got you just as wrong,” said Phil, and Dan was a little offended he was still capable of coherent speech.

“Yeah? How’s that?” Dan mumbled, dipping his tongue into the hollow of Phil’s collarbone. 

Phil had the audacity to smirk.

“Oh, save it,” said Dan. With one leg on either side of Phil’s hips, he sat up enough to take on Phil’s first shirt button.

Phil allowed himself to be stripped, his toying with the hem of Dan’s t-shirt laced with tension. “I’ve thought about you too, you know. Before this.”

Though Dan didn’t really know what to do with that, it was a frustrating enough confession to speed him toward end goal. He pushed open Phil’s shirt and ran his fingers through the smattering of revealed chest hair. Thumbs circling, stroking across Dan’s hipbones, right at the place where his jeans rode down, made his breath stutter. 

“I kind of really want to fuck you now, if that’s okay.”

Phil raised his eyebrows.

“I’m here for whatever you want,” said Phil, with the slightest upward shift of his hips. However subtle, it did not escape Dan’s notice. Like he wasn’t already hard enough.

“Bedroom,” Dan announced. He jumped off Phil, grabbed his hand, and began tugging. “I hope to fuck you’ve got lube because I’m out.”

Phil ruffled the back of his hair sheepishly. “I, uh, restocked. Last week.”

“Your room it is, then,” said Dan. He pulled Phil through the nearest doorframe, swinging it shut behind them.

High on adrenaline, Dan pushed Phil onto the bed with strength he hadn’t utilized in so long he’d damn near forgotten he had it. Hardly a second had passed before his shirt was over his head and halfway across the room. Phil was looking up at him, dazed. He was balanced on his forearms and his legs dangled off the bed.

Dan’s fingers flew to his jeans, fumbling impressively little considering that his eyes didn’t once leave Phil’s. He meant to rid himself just of the jeans, but his thumbs caught on his boxers and he let those get pulled along for the ride. Fuck it. His head was swimming too much for modesty.

At the sight of him, Phil’s breath hitched. His hand dragged across the front of his own jeans like a reflex.

“Phil,” said Dan, taking a step closer to run both hands up Phil’s thighs. “I think you understand why I want these the fuck off.”

“I don’t know.” Phil tried for a smile. “Could be loads of reasons.”

Dan’s hands, done with caressing, tightened right where the other boy’s thighs met his hips.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re quite getting the situation.” In one fluid motion, Dan slid his hands under Phil’s ass and tugged it toward the edge of the bed. He made short work of the top button of Phil’s jeans. The zip he slid down with more finesse. “And I really want you to understand.”

Phil moaned, because Dan had dropped to his knees and was mouthing at the combination of fabric and cock poking out from Phil’s open flies. “I’ve wanted to do this,” Dan said, dipping his tongue just under Phil’s waistband, “really fucking badly,” he used his fingers to lift it higher, “for about two billion years.”

“Do you get that, Phil?” Dan asked, before closing his mouth around the head of Phil’s cock.

“Ah— _god_ , Dan!”

Phil’s hand instantly flew to Dan’s hair, searching for purchase. The continued fabric barrier, shoved haphazardly past Phil’s cock, made it difficult for Dan to get any sort of decent rhythm going. He settled for shallow bobs and meticulous swipes of his tongue around the leaking tip.

“Are you gonna strip now,” said Dan, dipping his tongue into the slit to chase the intoxicating saltiness, “or do you need further persuading?”

“You are— _ahh_ —extremely convincing. The most convincing.” Involuntarily, it seemed, Phil’s ankles had locked around Dan’s back, holding him there. “Next you’ll hypnotize me into dancing the naked Macarena.”

“Later,” said Dan. He gave Phil’s bare cock one last stroke before leaning back, just to emphasize how pointless the pants were at this point. Phil pouted when Dan broke the shackles of his ankles.

“Off,” Dan repeated, no longer a suggestion. Phil’s eyes darkened, and this time he didn’t dawdle in complying.

“Keep going,” said Phil, flushed and exposed and waiting before him. “Stopping is against the rules.”

Dan hadn’t been planning on stopping. In fact, given another second he probably would have had his mouth back on Phil’s cock. He would’ve channeled his every frustration over the past several weeks, every yearning that socked him in the stomach and made him weak. He would’ve fed all that into a truly marvelous blowjob and sucked his best friend to the point of mutual, blissful exhaustion. At that statement, however, he paused.

“Is it, now,” he said. 

“Unless you want to try other things. All options are good options.”

“The lube is where again?”

Phil lifted his eyebrows. “Left bedside drawer.”

Dan stood, trying not to slouch as he walked around the bed. His knees were aching. He appraised the small bottle’s paper label clinically, noting with a mixture of amusement and befuddlement that it was cherry-flavored. “Predictable,” Dan scoffed as he circled back, bottle in hand.

Still standing just out of Phil’s reach, Dan said, “Tell me what you like.”

“You should be an expert on this by now, after the mountains of fanfic.”

Dan’s hands had been fiddling with the little bottle, flicking it open, drizzling out wetness. Now, he looked up with a flash. That smirk absolutely could not be tolerated. Dan dealt with it in two ways, each in quick succession.

“Actually shut up,” he growled. That was the first. The second was his torso flush against Phil’s and his hand between their hips, large enough to encircle both their cocks in a slow stroke.

Phil was breathing quicker, but the quirk had not yet left his lips. His hands he twined into Dan’s hair, holding their eye contact still as he murmured, “What does the fanfic say I like, Dan?”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” Dan’s other hand, slick with cherry-scented residue, had been stalling, trying not to mess up the comforter. He made use of it now, sliding his pointer finger past Phil’s perineum and circling the edge of his rim. Phil’s lips parted in a near silent gasp.

“Is that good, Phil? Do you like this?” Just barely, Dan pressed his fingertip inside.

“Dunno,” Phil said, pausing for two sharp inhales as Dan’s finger eased in to the first knuckle.

“Sorry, what exactly don’t you know?” Pushing slowly past the give, Dan waited until his finger was completely encompassed in heat. Then, he paused. “Be specific.”

“See, I don’t usually do this in fanfic.”

Dan jerked, his finger curling up inside the other man. Phil’s grin was instantly caught up in a moan, back arching as if he’d been punched. 

“Jesus fucking christ.” Dan would’ve been half infuriated had he not still been high off the ego boost from that reaction. He drew his finger out and pushed in again, faster this time. “I swear to god, if I hear the word _fanfic_ one more time in this bedroom—”

“ _Fanfic_ , Dan. Fanfic, fanfic, fanfic.”

“You’re the worst person in the world,” said Dan, now barely paying attention to his finger’s increasingly rapid thrusts into Phil’s body. “And I hate you a lot.” He pushed his middle finger in alongside the pointer. Carefully, he curved them both to hit that sweet spot.

Phil craned his neck and crashed their lips together, a poor disguise for the little breathy noises Dan wanted a complete studio album of.

Not bothering to separate the speaking from the kissing, Phil said, “I can take another.” The traces of teasing were nowhere to be heard, but Dan wanted to make sure.

“Tell me you want it,” he said. Three fingers were somewhat of a stretch, but Phil just bit his lip and it wasn’t long at all before Dan was marveling at half his hand fluidly disappearing with each thrust.

“Tell me you want me to do this,” said Dan again. He ached to touch himself, resisting only by digging fingertips into the soft flesh of Phil’s side.

“I want you,” said Phil.

“Say it again.”

“ _God_ , I want you to fuck me.”

“Three times for good luck.”

“Dan.” The pupils of Phil’s eyes eclipsed their blue irises. “If you don’t get inside me right now, I will spontaneously combust and burn down the flat.” 

Dan huffed out a laugh the same moment his cock twitched. “Right. Right, yeah.” He pulled out his fingers. “Fuck,” he said, when his cursory search of the tussled comforter came up empty.

“Maybe check the floor?”

Dan sighed dramatically, picked himself up, and reprimanded Phil for checking out his ass while he crawled halfway beneath the bed. Phil denied it. Finally, Dan found the bastard of a bottle hiding under an old t-shirt and he leaped to his feet. 

“I lied,” said Phil, “I was totally checking out your ass. Did I mention you’re really hot and also we should totally be having sex right now?”

Dan noted the way that Phil’s eyes flickered from his face to his cock as he slicked it with shaky, thorough strokes. Dan stepped as close to the bed as he could without falling onto it. He stayed standing, mostly because his spine was ramrod straight with nervous energy and, besides, he liked the picture they made—Phil with his heels kicking idly at the carpet, legs splayed, Dan situating himself between them. Dan was further encouraged when Phil’s thighs tightened around his hips, effectively locking him in place.

“Try putting your legs up, okay?”

With raised eyebrows, Phil dared to be skeptical.

“Come on,” said Dan, impatient as he grabbed hold of the other man’s ankles and hoisted them to where he wanted them. “Clearly, you can.” Phil’s heels were pressed into the meat of his shoulders.

“Told you I’m bendy,” said Phil, hips edging toward more contact even as the stretch made him grimace. The height of the bed didn’t quite compensate for Dan’s freakish tallness, but he only had to crouch a little for his cock to brush against the cleft of Phil’s ass.

Phil huffed out a breath. “What’re you waiting for, then?’

“Shit, sorry, hold on.” For aiming purposes, this position didn’t offer the best vantage point in the world. Dan ducked his head and bent his knees some more, cock in hand.

Phil gasped when Dan finally pushed the first half-inch inside him.

“See,” he smirked, as Dan caught his shaky breath, “there you go.”

“Twat,” Dan muttered, driving his hips forward and the point home. It was gratifying to meet so little resistance, to know that Phil was ready for him. Even more gratifying was capturing the exact sound Phil made when he pressed fully inside him.

“ _Ah_ ,” Phil cried out breathily, putting Dan’s imagination to shame. “Ready when you are.”

If Phil was going to be that way, so be it. High on the kind of high-octane adrenaline cocktail only sex and a challenge could serve up, Dan slid both hands under Phil’s bum and lifted his hips about a foot off the bed, so that only his back and head still made contact with the sheets. The move had the rapid-fire double effect of allowing him to stand up straight and easing him still deeper into Phil.

“Can your arms handle this?” Phil asked, concerned.

Dan’s biceps were already expressing confusion at the unexpected turn of events, but nevertheless.

“I’m good,” he said, “I’m so fucking good,” and he proved it by pulling out partway and snapping his hips forward again. 

“ _Shit_ , Dan.” A flush was crawling up Phil’s neck. He drew his lower lip briefly between his teeth before releasing it in a shaky exhale. “Keep going—just like that.” 

Dan fucked into him again with slow, incomplete strokes. It was a little agonizing, to be honest, but halfway in, halfway out was about all his arms could manage.

Phil clarified. “Yeah, um, like that but maybe above the speed limit.”

“Are you calling me a slow driver?”

“Literally.”

Dan rolled his eyes, but picked up his pace. With anyone else, it would’ve been easy to lose himself in the pure physical sensation of hot and tight. With Phil, Dan kept being forcibly dragged back into the moment by the little things. Phil’s neck arched, displaying red speckles new and pretty and delicate. Phil’s fingers, too far to reach him but close enough to twist into the duvet, its downy softness rising up between them like dough. Phil’s eyes, determined to hold his own even as they threatened to flicker closed.

Dan hardly noticed the muscle strain involved in keeping Phil aloft until the other boy’s bum started jiggling in time with his shaking arms.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, not ceasing to thrust until a combination of his biceps and his quads failed him at last. He collapsed forward onto the bed and onto Phil, who was looking awfully amused considering Dan was still inside of him.

“I thought I could do it,” said Dan, burying his head in Phil’s neck, “but I was wrong.” 

Phil gave Dan’s damp back a pat. “Still—you get eight and a half gold stars out of ten. For effort.”

“God, that’s like the participation prize at the sex Olympics. Give me a fucking—”

Dan choked out a moan in response to Phil grinding up against him. He was rendered speechless by the double sensation of Phil’s tightness shifting around him and the tip of Phil’s cock dragging moisture across his stomach.

“Sorry to change the subject,” Phil said. “Except I’m really, really not.”

With his elbows braced on either side of Phil’s head, Dan conducted an experimental thrust—a rapid out and back in again. “Yeah—this’ll work, I think.”

“You think?” Phil huffed. He utilized the lull in activity to wrap his limbs thoroughly around Dan’s torso. “Get on with it, then.”

Dan fell back into rhythm. “Really, that’s all the enthusiasm you can— _ah_ —muster?”

“What would you… rather… me say?” Phil let the words loose in a stuttering stream of breath, as Dan slammed into him particularly hard. “ _’Oh please, Dan, fuck me…_ ’”

His smirk was so cheeky that Dan was forced to kiss it off. Dan was balls-deep inside of his best friend, sure, but it took a lot to kill that last self-conscious shred of doubt. Against Phil’s lips, he said, “Not if you don’t mean it.”

Phil framed Dan’s face with his hands, so he could best meet his gaze.

“What if I do?” he said. There was still a tilt to his lips, but it had gotten quieter. Something in the sharpness of his stare, beneath the haze, made Dan believe it.

It was like he’d been given a final permission. He let go.

“ _Fuck,_ Phil.” Dan’s mouth fell to the other boy’s neck, remapping his handiwork from earlier, all the while pounding into Phil hard and fast enough to make the bedframe shake. Heat like molten lava was pooling up in the space behind his navel, faster than he could hope to control it. Tufts of Phil’s hair had ridden up in a dark and messy halo beneath his head.

“Oh god, Dan, _yes_ …” There was no irony left to detect. “I’m not gonna last.”

“Won’t have to.” One hand on Phil’s cock, stroking in clumsy time with his thrusts, had Phil coming with his face scrunched up and a low, choked moan. Dan kept his hips moving, Phil tightening around him in spurts as he rode out his climax. It was all he could ever possibly want and still not enough.

“Dan,” said Phil, “kiss me.”

With Phil’s taste on his tongue Dan finally hit his high. Or rather, his high hit him. It sucker-punched him clean off his elbows and dropped his full weight onto Phil. Knockout. Euphoria and shock battled it out in his boneless frame.

Phil rubbed circles on his back. “You’re heavy,” he said. Even though it didn’t sound like a complaint, Dan grumbled more or less incoherently into Phil’s chest. 

“And sweaty,” Phil added.

“And you have a dumb face,” said Dan, more audibly. “So, ha!”

Dan’s lucidity was making a brief comeback before its inevitable downfall. It gave him the willpower to pull out, slump beside Phil, and scoot a few feet up on the mattress—no more, no less. Before the sleeping, however, which undoubtedly would be kickass, Dan had to make sure of one thing.

“So, um, if we ever tell actual people the story of how this happened…”

“Right,” Phil prompted.

“How ‘bout we don’t tell them this version.”

“Daniel, are you suggesting we lie?” He clucked his tongue.

“It wouldn’t be a _lie_ , necessarily,” said Dan, “Just an edited and incomplete truth.” 

Grinning, Phil planted a kiss on the top of Dan’s head. “Don’t worry—I can keep a secret.”

“But you’re never gonna let me live it down, are you.” Dan sighed, a mix of resignation and undiluted happiness. 

“Nope,” Phil promised. “Not until after all the humans get reincarnated into robots. So, like, at least twelve million years.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic (AKA "The Meta Fic") has been in the works for an obscenely long time (I've been writing it since last Thanksgiving and it's been sitting idle in my drafts since July) and I really wanted to post it before literally all of the shit goes down next week. I'm genuinely proud of this one and I'm so excited (and nervous) to hear people's reactions. Basically the whole thing I'm playing with here is subverting expectations when it comes to Fandom vs. Real Life, so I really couldn't resist going for Top!Dan (it just fit). Please leave comments and/or message me on tumblr (under the same URL)! :D


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